


Cara Scenes, Kirkwall

by TreeHuggerHannah



Series: Tempest for PbP [2]
Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-23
Updated: 2014-10-23
Packaged: 2018-02-22 06:39:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,475
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2498273
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TreeHuggerHannah/pseuds/TreeHuggerHannah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some scenes from Tempest's past for our PbP timeline. (TRIGGER WARNINGS: Sexual abuse and child loss.) Some of this is taken from another fic I wrote that is set in her alternate Inquisition timeline, so parts of it may look familiar, and parts are new.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cara Scenes, Kirkwall

There was a sharp rap on the door. Cara still wasn't used to this room - until tonight she had slept in a dormitory with a dozen other apprentices, all of whom had been puzzled by and rather jealous of her sudden good fortune to inherit a private chamber - and the unexpected sound startled her. She padded over in bare feet and her night dress, and opened the door to find three templars standing outside. Cara recognized the officer, a well-muscled man with red hair and a beard and mustache, as Ser Boniface, but she could not have put names to the two newly knighted templars flanking him.

"Messeres, can I help you...?" the mage girl asked hesitantly, but before she had even finished speaking, the three had barged into her room.

"We have reports that you have contraband magical items hidden on your person," Ser Boniface barked at her. "Remove your gown."

Cara blushed a bright crimson. She had never undressed in front of a man before. The three templars were staring at her. What did they imagine she could possibly have hidden beneath her thin night dress? When the templars commanded, though, a mage obeyed. With trembling hands she pulled her gown over her head, and one of the templars hastily grabbed it from her. She stood shivering and ashamed, trying her best to stand at angle that concealed as much of her form as possible.

The templars were still staring at her in a way that seemed... almost predatory. Did they truly think she was a dangerous mage? Cara wondered. She was still a mere apprentice!

"And the small-clothes," Ser Boniface instructed impatiently.

"But... but messere... I... surely?" Cara stammered. "Surely it is not necessary...?"

He nodded to one of his men, who slapped her hard across the face. The loud sound in the near-empty room startled her as much as the sudden pain did.

"Do as I say," Ser Boniface told her evenly. "Or we'll have to assist you to disrobe."

Cara's hands were shaking too much too accomplish this in a manner they considered sufficiently timely, so the templars made good on the threat. The girl stared at the ground, but she could feel their eyes upon her, and when she shivered as they closed in around her, it was not just from cold. Tears dripped down her cheeks as they ran their hands over her body, stroking where surely nothing could be concealed, probing past the point of pain.

As humiliated and violated as she felt, Cara was still taken by surprise when they dragged her to the bed. Templars were supposed to be the Maker's servants! But the Maker was not served tonight.

 

***

 

"You will never tell anybody about this," Ser Boniface said when he - and then his men, and then he again - had finished, pinning her again with his body and whispering in her ear. His beard scraped against her cheek. His touch sickened her. The weight of him made her bruised, violated body ache. She'd been a virgin, until tonight.

"I won't," she lied. As soon as he let her go, Cara had decided, she would run to the First Enchanter. The elder mage might not be the most proactive when it came to defending the interests of the mages in his charge, but surely he would recognize the seriousness of this, the unacceptability. A templar could not simply... not even to a mage.

Lost momentarily in thought, she didn't anticipate Ser Boniface's shift of position. His beefy shoulder trapped her own slender one, and he grasped her opposite hand and twisted it, exposing the delicate pale flesh of the inside of her wrist. He drew his dagger across it, cutting five sharp lines into the skin.

Cara cried out as blood welled - from shock more than pain, at first, since her frazzled nerve endings took a few seconds to register the sensation. She tried instinctively to pull away, but Boniface held her arm still. He dripped a healing potion into the wound, and smirked as the flesh sizzled and she whimpered. When the wounds had mended, there were five raised white scars on her wrist.

What was this, some strange form of torture? Tears dripped down her cheeks as the templar repeated the process with her other wrist.

Ser Boniface drew back and admired his handiwork. "Now you won't tell," he said. "Because if you do, I'll accuse you of blood magic, and show them the evidence. You can never tell anyone, or you'll be digging your own grave. No one will ever believe you, when you swear you're not a blood mage. Not when they see those scars. No one will listen when you beg for your life. A few words from me, and you're dead."

She stared at him in horror, realization dawning.

Boniface smiled at the expression on her face, then leaned forward and kissed her. "See you tomorrow, love."

As an foundling abandoned at the chantry orphanage, Cara didn't know her birthday, but she thought she was fourteen that year. As Ser Boniface predicted, she didn't tell a soul. The scars on her wrists ensured her silence.

 

***

 

"Please, just let me hold her," she begged. She pushed herself upward from the bed, craning her neck, catching just a glimpse of her baby. The child had thick black hair like her mother's. Then the lay Sister whisked her away, and the door slammed shut behind them.

The young mage tried to struggle into a standing position, but one of the templars grabbed her roughly by the shoulders and pushed her back onto the blood-soaked bed. A brief but furious scuffle ensued, leaving the new mother bruised and battered with a split lip, and no closer to her baby for it.

One of the templars hit her again for good measure, then they left without a word. She pressed her hands against her swollen belly, now emptied of its precious cargo, wincing at the pain with every movement but craving what little comfort she could find. All her tears had been spent during the birth, but she sobbed in dry gasps, curled in on herself and rocking back and forth.

When they must have judged her sufficiently calm, the lay Sister returned - no baby in hand - and began methodically cleaning up Cara and the bed. For all the emotion she showed, she might have been scrubbing the floor.

"Please," Cara said, clutching at the lay Sister's hand. "Please, you're a woman too. Let me see her. Please, just let me hold her..."

The lay Sister jerked away from the girl's grasp, but sat down on the bed a safe distance away. "She's gone," the woman said. "Forget about her. She's gone."

"How can I forget my own child?"

"She's not your child," the lay Sister said rather sharply. "She is not 'your own,' and she never will be. She'll be adopted by a nice couple, and they will be her family. Not you. You aren't a mother. You were the vessel that brought that child into the world, and nothing more."

"But I... I love her..." Cara murmured weakly.

The lay Sister chuckled faintly at her naive proclamation. "Your love is worth nothing, my dear. You have nothing to offer that baby. A sixteen year old mage? You will never see her again. She will never miss you or think of you. You have two options now. You can give up and die. Or you can forget and move on."

Cara had no intention of dying. With time, she would surely find a way to move on. She was equally certain that she would never forget. Perhaps, she told herself, the lay Sister was right and the baby was better off without her. Still, Cara knew that deep in her secret heart, she would never stop feeling like a mother.

 

***

 

When the chaos began, Cara didn't know where to go, so she followed two other mages who seemed to have some idea what direction would lead them to safety.

She wasn't sure which terrified her more, the abominations or the templars - both were giving her plenty to fear tonight. It seemed everywhere she turned, a mage was giving in to demons... or a templar was indiscriminately mowing down mages to try to contain the threat. Even for a city where the Veil was thin, it was an unusually chaotic night.

Cara feared for her life, so she ran, and she didn't stop running. Not till she made it to the docks.

Her exit from Kirkwall was far from glorious, stowed away on a ship, hidden between casks of wine and sacks of flour. Freedom was freedom, though. Live was life. On that voyage, tossed by storms, Cara would become Tempest, shedding her old life for a new one as a snake shed its skin.


End file.
